Ship of Foes

By Holly Morris

Published: May 23, 1999

Three Miles Down
By James Hamilton-Paterson.
298 pp. New York: The Lyons Press. $22.95.

The Soviet Union has collapsed. Russian scientists and British salvagers cruise through the Atlantic in a Russian research ship called the Keldysh. Days are spent deciphering clues from World War II records. Nights are rife with sonar pings, whispers of double-crossings and vodka. The C.I.A. may be watching. Gold is involved.

The stage is set for James Hamilton-Paterson to create a thriller that he will parlay into a seven-digit film rights sale. But this odyssey is nonfiction, putting the author at the mercy of reality during his six weeks with a treasure-hunting expedition in 1995. We, mercifully, are in the hands of a deft storyteller -- a seasoned novelist -- who knows how to mine the nuance of character. In ''Three Miles Down,'' he moves beyond the typical adventure formula and gives us a story that lingers on people and place and on small, genuine curiosities.

The Keldysh and its passengers, a British salvage expedition named Project Orca, are on an ambitious mission in search of two sunken vessels. Both are believed to have been carrying gold when they went down in separate World War II incidents: the I-52, a Japanese submarine sunk by Allied forces in June 1944, and the Aurelia (a pseudonym), a British troop carrier sunk by an Italian submarine 15 months earlier. Both wrecks are in international waters -- a fact that will beat back lawsuits if gold is found. Project Orca doesn't have precise coordinates for either of the vessels, or a strong leader; however, the Orca team members do have extensive experience, valuable research and -- thanks to the Keldysh -- some of the world's most sophisticated underwater technology. The stars of the Keldysh's technological assets are two manned submersibles complete with lights, cameras and manipulator arms that operate drills and cutters.

Among the shipmates is Mike Anderson, the orchestrator of the expedition. The quirky Clive Hayley and Simon Fraser are the investors' representatives. Andrea Cordani, a researcher, fights hard for her place in a male-dominated culture and is the most level-headed member of the entire Orca team. An American, Ralph White (whose secretive Government connections make him something of an ''Oliver North of underwater photography''), and the author are the only observers aboard. Anatoly Sagalevitch, the brilliant and roguish designer of the submersibles and the head of the operation, is trying to mix science with commercialism.

The group quickly regresses to the ''institutional huggermugger one first encountered at boarding school,'' Hamilton-Paterson writes. ''Gossip, rumor, wounded feelings, sendups of third parties behind their backs, emotional overkill'' are the result of mixing people with varied agendas. This tense shipboard community proves Hamilton-Paterson's thesis that ''treasure hunts have far more to do with personalities than with technology.''

Moral questions swirl around the issue of salvage. At what point does grave digging become archeology? Is a wreck a tomb even if no bones can survive so deep in the ocean? Are salvage expeditions morally redeemed if they also support scientific research?

Understandably, these quandaries are forgotten at the front lines. The very ''Right Stuff''-like Russian aquanauts know that three miles down there are no ''slight defects,'' only ''fatal flaws.'' These aqua rock stars plummet in the tiny submersibles -- and then casually whip out screwdrivers to do a little ad hoc rewiring.

Pressure may be the nemesis aboard the Keldysh, but deep under the surface it is the Grim Reaper. If there were to be a pinhole leak at 16,000 feet, the seeping needle of water would ''cut through a body like a laser,'' Ralph White tells the author. If a seal broke and there was an implosion? ''You might just hear a click. Then the shock wave would turn you into a liquid about as thick as consomme.''

Pure science is the pot of gold for the Russian scientists. Their plunder lies, for example, in the capture of bacterial specimens from hydrothermal vents (called smokers) that mark the edges of the earth's tectonic plates.

For the others gold is the gold, and for the few without a tangible stake (including the author) treasure lies in the essence of the quest. ''Like love, gold is its own explanation,'' Hamilton-Paterson says, ''a metaphor for pure longing, unattainable happiness, an epitome of that quasi-mystical economy of losing-and-finding which hovers behind our lives and seems to motivate all we do . . . a lump of dream taken from a heap of promise.''

While the book's tension is in the complex relationships among the shipmates, the climax comes with the author's journey in a submersible. Declaring that ''playing it safe's a modern suburban disease,'' he jumps at the opportunity to travel to ''a place without real coordinates, one that our recent forebears thought of as terrifyingly inchoate, godless, too primeval for any human connection, beyond morality, a leftover from Chaos.''

Down in the cramped pod we look, as if through a tiny periscope, both back in time and into his character. While marveling at 50-billion-year-old rocks, he claims a sort of genetic memory and recalls events from 40 years ago: ''slanted afternoons, the words of pacts, the nape of someone's neck.'' He concludes, ''I have been moving through a bath of solvent which has thinned away crusts and membranes which had built up around certain memories.''

Ironically, these magical passages point to a weakness in the book. They offer only glimpses of a narrator whose own story is best equipped to cradle this voyage into human desire, science, history and good old-fashioned adventure.

Eventually, shipboard politics deteriorate into finger pointing and animosities. The gambler's false optimism that has strung us along begins to dissipate. But then, two months after the Orca expedition concludes without finding either ship, there is startling news. Another Russian ship chartered by an American expedition has found the I-52 -- seven miles from the Orca survey area. New conspiracy theories are hatched. Did the Keldysh aquanauts actually find the I-52, keep mum and sell the coordinates to another operation for a higher price? (In fact, conspiracy was unlikely; good research, first-rate sonar and dumb luck probably helped the American operation.)

As the story closes, there's a final twist. With its manned submersibles, the Keldysh might be the only ship capable of salvaging the I-52. Will the two groups join forces? Suddenly, this treasure hunt has the makings of a sequel.